Investigation: MH17 shot down from area near Snezhnoye

Sept 28 2016

TASS

A fragments of the MH17crashed in the Donetsk Region, Ukraine.

Reuters

Flight MH17 was shot down from an area controlled by militias at the time

Flight MH17 was shot down from an area near the settlement of Pervomaiskoye, south of the populated locality of Snezhnoye in Ukraine's Donetsk region, which was controlled by militias at the time, Wilbert Paulissen, head of the Central Crime Investigation department of the Dutch National Police, told a news conference on Sept. 28, announcing the first results of the criminal investigation into the tragedy.

Paulissen said that a BUK missile was launched from a farmland near the settlement of Pervomaiskoye which, at the time, was controlled by militias, and that the information was confirmed by the U.S. radar data, which estimated the launch site as six kilometers south of Snezhnoye.

Earlier, the Kiev Scientific Research Forensic Center put forward the same version. However, it was not confirmed by the tests carried out by the Almaz-Antei missile manufacturer in Russia. The experiments showed that MH17 was downed from an area near the village of Zaroshchenskoye, located 20 kilometers south of Snezhnoye. Zaroshchenskoye was controlled by Ukrainian military then.

"The analysis of primary radar data rejects the claims of the Ukrainian side and conclusions of the technical Dutch investigators that the missile that downed the Malaysian Boeing could have been launched from an area near Snezhnoye," Koban said.

"If the Malaysian Boeing (flight MH17) had been shot down by a missile from any region to the east from the crash site, it would have been detected by a Russian primary radar," the general said.

Earlier Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called on the investigation to take into account all information, including the data presented by Russian military.